Without public input, Putnam legislature prepares to approve outdoor ad deal on trailway

I just got off the phone with Deb Ramsey, a Tax Watch reader, who told me she’s nearing 500 signatures on her Change.org petitionopposing Bikepath Country’s bid to sell outdoor advertising on the Putnam Trailway.

She had read my May 23 column, which broke the story, and subsequent Tax Watch blog postings, which have detailed a tale of backroom deals, cronyism, and deceit in the auctioning off of the views on one of Putnam’s most beloved preserves.

“They shouldn’t make a decision on a public venue without public input,” said Ramsey, of Croton-on-Hudson, past president of the Westchester Cycle Club, who often rides in Putnam. “It’s a public space. The public should have a say in what happens.”

Ramsey will present the signatures to the Putnam County Legislature at the Putnam County Historic Courthouse, 40 Gleneida Ave., at the corner of Routes 52 and 301, at 7 p.m. tomorrow night,Tues. July 7. Many Tax Watch readers will be there.

Westchester ditched its trailway ads deal with Bikepath Country in June, after hearing, loud and clear, from cyclists and pedestrians that they didn’t want to see advertising in their woods. The Astorino administration didn’t need that headache this election year.

I learned today that the Putnam Legislature will convene Tuesday evening in private at 6 p.m.,, to meet with their outdoor advertising friends, Ritchie O’Keefe and Ivan Bellotto, to hash things out behind closed doors. This will be the legislators’ first opportunity to see the agreement that they are expected to vote upon later that evening. The vote would come without the legislators having the opportunity to hear what their constituents think about a plan that will significantly alter the public facility where they retreat for refreshment.

That’s the same resolution that the Legislature’s Audit and Administration Committee last week passed through to the full board, without even seeing the agreement they had just approved.

If Putnam County Executive Maryellen Odell has her five votes, her faction will ram it through, despite Odell’s pledge before the Legislature last week to seek input from all stakeholders.

Public input is allowed at committee meetings. At meetings of the full Legislature, such as Tuesday’s, public comment only comes at the meeting’s conclusion, after the votes have been cast.

The legislators, though, have been getting calls, many calls. They’ve also been reading Jeff Green’s trenchant commentary on the News That Matters blog on Facebook. They know how many signatures are on Deb Ramsey’s petition, Five hundred names on a petition is a lot of names. Most of names are the names of Putnam County residents.These residents have an emotional tie to the people’s path from Baldwin Place to Brewster.

They won’t stop being unhappy if the resolution passes. They won’t like it when the Trailway ads go up.

The Putnam legislators are feeling the heat. Jeff Green, a Kent Cliffs housepainter, told me tonight that he’d received an email from Legislature Chairman Richard Othmer, offering the same bogus compromise he’d mentioned at a committee meeting last week: Just give us a year to test out our experiment.

Green declined.He told Othmer that he didn’t want Ritchie O’Keefe and Ivan Bellotto to take their money, and leave us with a trail blighted by outdoor advertising.

What is banned on our roads should be banned in our woods.

Photo: A mock-up of the trailway signs, when Bikepath Country considered signs with 50 percent advertising. The signs for Putnam will reserve 10 percent of its space for ads. Photo/ David McKay Wilson

Veteran journalist David McKay Wilson has written about public affairs for more than 30 years, including 21 years at The Journal News, and several years as a regular contributor to The New York Times. A Sharfman Fellow in economics at Brandeis University, Wilson was honored by the Education Writers Association in 2010 for his analysis of economists’ growing role in U.S. education policy and in 2012 for his reporting on suburban schools and cheating by those who administer standardized tests.